The Conveyancing Foundation is a zero-profit registered charity whose purpose is to enhance the lives of those in the conveyancing industry and to support charity fundraising initiatives.

The Foundation has announced exciting plans for 2023 in continuing its revolutionary work with the “Be Kind We Care” initiative and in supporting existing and new partner charities through its new and innovative Charity Grant scheme. The Charity scheme will award up to £2000 to individuals or organisations from within the property industry who are fundraising for their chosen charities.

Having already raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for charity since its inception in 2010, the Foundation will reach the £1million charity fundraising milestone later this year.

Plans for 2023 include research into wellbeing and best practice through major industry wide surveys, followed by round-the-table expert webinars to dissect the survey findings and to develop blueprints for what constitutes industry best practice.

‘Be Kind We Care’ worked in partnership with LawCare, Agents Together and the Mindstep Foundation charities and has already run a series of powerful webinars and developed the complimentary Conveyancing Foundation Wellbeing Resource HUB.

This year’s BKWC plans will delve deeper into the wellbeing issues, challenges and resulting best practice that we face as an industry.

“Law is not a traditionally forgiving place to work but with strategies like Be Kind We Care in place, and by providing practical coping methodologies, we can create a better working environment for all those involved in the property industry. It is for these reasons, and so many more, that I am proud to be an Ambassador for The Conveyancing Foundation and look forward to promoting they do.”

We are also delighted to announce the appointment of new Trustees – Jess Smith, Operations Director at Convey Group and Laura Burkinshaw, Deputy Chair of the SLC and Legal Director at Convey Law, who will champion the aims of the Foundation and support our continued good governance.

Jess Smith commented:

“Joining the Conveyancing Foundation as a Trustee is a wonderful opportunity to support the charity’s aims for 2023 and beyond as well as maximising our opportunities to support more wonderful causes.

With hundreds of thousands of pounds already achieved for worthy causes to date, I am incredibly proud to further support the Conveyancing Foundation and continue the positive impact of the Be Kind We Care initiative.”

Laura Burkinshaw commented:

“The Conveyancing Foundation has become renowned within the property industry for introducing simple schemes that have far reaching impacts, such as the Charity Lotto.

“This is an exciting time to join the Board of Trustees as we look forward to delivering new programmes that will support the wellbeing of those in the industry whilst we also grow our fundraising for other wonderful charities.” Conveyancing Foundation is a zero-profit

Conveyancing Foundation Chairman Lloyd Davies commented:

“We have been working hard on ways to develop and grow the Foundation into a body which represents, supports and champions key issues within the industry.  Our endeavour is to enhance the lives of those in the property industry and to promote and assist with charity fundraising to help those that need our support.

“We believe the best way of doing this is to work with likeminded experts and key stakeholders, such as Jess Smith, Laura Burkinshaw and David Opie, from within the industry who will help us as Trustees and Ambassadors and to encourage other companies and businesses to come on board as Foundation Partners to support us in our work.

“Together we can continue to make a massive difference within our industry. I am very proud and humbled by the charity fundraising that we have achieved so far and by widening our support base, we can achieve even more.

“We will continue to discover and promote wellbeing best practice within our industry. I am very excited by what 2023 will bring for the Conveyancing Foundation and our supporters and I would urge those reading this to please come forward and get involved.  We very much look forward to working with you.”

For information and queries about how to become a Conveyancing Foundation Partner: please contact info@ conveyancingfoundation.org.uk

This year several members of our IT team are taking part in Movember to raise awareness and much-needed funds for mental health and suicide prevention, prostate cancer and testicular cancer charities.

Samson, Neha and Godwin will be supporting Movember by walking or running 60km while Seb will be running 100km. Joe, Steve, Kelvin, Idris, Rafie, Jordan and Rob will be growing a traditional Movember moustache.

Thank you to everyone who has offered to support the cause.

Abby joined Convey Group in 2022 at a time of rapid expansion to oversee all finances for the Convey Group. She has a wealth of experience in finance forecasting, budgeting and business planning gained in the business world over several decades.

She also has an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the legal conveyancing sector after over a decade working for another large conveyancing group, where she also handled finances for a number of companies under the same umbrella.

Abby is responsible for overseeing strategic financial planning for Convey including ensuring the financial systems and structures are in place for major projects such as the launch of Convey365IT next year. One of her first projects included the financial planning for the Convey Group’s first office in Swansea which was opened in 2022.

The Newport based agency Convey Group received three awards at the prestigious ESTAS Customer Service Awards 2022, the biggest awards in the UK property industry. The winners were announced at the largest event in the property industry held at the Grosvenor House in London and hosted by the country’s favourite TV property presenter Phil Spencer in front of a sellout 1,200 guests.

For the second year in a row, Convey Group were named the best conveyancers in Wales and also won the award for ‘best in county’ for Newport where our offices are headquartered.

Managing Director Lloyd Davies also picked up the coveted Silver award for National Conveyancing Group.

Now in their 19th year the awards, which are powered by ESTAS own customer review platform, recognise the conveyancers, agents and brokers for customer service based on ratings from clients who have been through the whole moving experience. This year’s results were calculated from over 200,000 customer review ratings.

Phil Spencer, who has hosted The ESTAS every year since their inception in 2003 addressed the live audience “I’ve said it many times but the work of agents, conveyancers and brokers is vastly underrated by the general public and its only when clients go through the process that they understand the effort, complexity and hard work that goes into your job. Spencer concluded

“Its your passion for what you do that makes The ESTAS the most important day in the property calendar every year.”

Conveyancers were recognised in counties and regions around the UK. National Grand Prix Awards were also announced for the Best Single Conveyancing Office in the UK.

Simon Brown Founder of The ESTAS said “When we started we wanted to create a set of property awards which were completely pure, where winners were selected solely on customer service ratings from actual transactions. Nineteen years on ESTAS is now the customer review platform of choice for property professionals and the most prestigious award a conveyancer, agent or mortgage broker can win in the property industry.”

Staff at Convey Group raised over £100 with celebrations, cake and fundraising activities to mark the annual Macmillan Coffee Morning last Friday (September 30).

Convey Group also donated an additional £1000 through funds raised by the Conveyancing Foundation’s Charity Lotto to Macmillan, with a total of £1108.93 now donated to the charity event which does so much to support cancer sufferers and their families.

The office was decorated with balloons and Macmillan bunting as staff really got into the spirit of the nationwide fundraiser in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support with competitions including ‘cartoon a colleague’.

Remote working staff were also able to take part online to support the event.

Staff in the Newport and Swansea offices baked and brought along a selection of delicious cakes with donations made by their colleagues to sample their home baking.

Every single penny raised will now help Macmillan which relies on the generosity of those fundraising for an incredible 97% of its funding.

Convey Group Managing Director Lloyd Davies said:

“Charity fundraising is at the heart of everything we do at Convey Group and our staff have a long tradition of taking part and raising funds for many charities, both national and regional and sometimes even international.

“We are always extremely proud to support Macmillan Coffee Morning as Macmillan does so much in providing services for thousands of people nationwide who are living with cancer.”

Convey Group MD Lloyd Davies joined an expert conveyancing panel at last week’s inaugural Digital Conveyancing Summit (28 September, 2022) held at the prestigious Law Society in London which focused on digital conveyancing now and in the future.

Industry veteran Lloyd, who is also chairman of the Conveyancing Foundation charity, joined Ian McCann, CEO of Legal Studio, and Mike Leeman, Managing Partner of Bell Lamb & Joynson, in a live discussion in front of an audience of industry colleagues hosted by David Opie, Managing Editor of Today’s Conveyancer.

Taking questions from the floor, the trio talked about how technology had changed working practices within the conveyancing industry and what impact it had had on staff.

The panel agreed that the best use of technology was in supporting staff to enable them to work smarter rather than harder and concentrate on customer service.

Lloyd stressed that while technology could certainly be used more and more to monitor staff, its key benefits were in helping conveyancing practices to “manage capacity” which had been extremely useful during the Pandemic, and “enhancing client service”.

“Technology plays a big part in managing capacity,” he said. “We try not to give our conveyancers too much work and tech gives us that transparency of seeing what they can cope with.

“What happens with most firms is that they use technology to provide a better service.”

Lloyd also said that digital feedback enabled by tech provided firms with “an important barometer” of performance which in turn meant potential issues with staff wellbeing could be picked up early.

The panel also discussed the positive and time-saving uses of technology including video training, group meetings and automation of some of the simpler tasks as well as the division of labour within a conveyancing practice to enable staff to manage transactions and provide the best service for clients.

The panel event was one of ten sessions at the conference featuring industry experts from the legal and conveyancing worlds looking at the biggest and most topical issues facing them in 2022 and beyond.